PSUFA: Advocating for part-time faculty and researchers at Portland State University since 1978.

Year: 2016

Time To Celebrate!
Ratification Party and Membership MeetingJune 6, 2016 @ 4:00pm-6:00pm
PSU Viking Game Room and Bowling Alley
Basement of the Smith Memorial Student Union Building at 1825 SW Broadway

We’re hosting a membership meeting, Q&A, and vote at 5:00 pm to ratify our new contract and celebrate the end of the school year. It isn’t an official agreement until our members weigh in and this is your chance.

After almost a year of bargaining, on Friday May 20th, just after 8pm, our PSUFA bargaining team and the PSU Administration finally concluded negotiations. We reached an agreement that we will be recommending to our members for ratification in the coming weeks.

This Agreement will be expire June 30th, 2020, with an economic re-opener so that we can re-negotiate wages and benefits in 2018.

More on Friday’s session:

Friday began with open discussion of process as we attempted to regroup and revisit economic options we’d discussed in our last session. We also had report backs from the Administration about processes for paying adjuncts for committee work and heard some unfortunate information about our Faculty Education Fund. The Admin team was firm about the supposed new reality that the Education fund couldn’t be increased except nominally because it functions with tuition remissions. We had previously discussed substantial increases to the fund and so this came as a bit of a blow to our team.

As the day progressed and we tried costing out different options. Our team members expressed frustration with the numbers the Admin’s team were proposing as viable options for wage increases. PSUFA team members started asking questions about how the small raises, reflected our supposedly shared interest in recognizing a marginalized faculty group.

Team members spoke about the importance of recognition through fair wages and described the gap in equity between part and full-time faculty’s minimum pay. The administration team listened, but also shared their different interpretations of equity. They were looking for our wages to be on par with comparator institutions. We argued that there is a national consensus about adjunct wages being systematically (and problematically) low, so why would it make sense to compare to other institutions? Our part-time faculty are diverse in terms of income level, but the majority make the minimum per-credit rate, many are on food stamps, many are struggling to make ends meet, many want teaching to be a career and it isn’t sustainable. Regardless, we should be getting equal pay for equal work. Adjuncts teach the same classes as non-tenure-track full-time faculty for hundreds of dollars less a credit.

After this heartfelt and serious expression from our team, the Admin asked to take a break. It was during this caucus that we decided to take a new direction. Our frustration was clear; we weren’t making much headway and the afternoon was upon us. We decided to create a proposal and move slightly away from the Affinity IBB process.

The rest of the day was spent exchanging and discussing proposals. It was clear that the Administration wanted us to agree to a long-term contract – locking in 5 years of small increases to our wages and benefits in exchange for what they saw was a relatively generous increase to our per-credit minimum rate up front. They also shared that the length-of-service increases that we’d been talking about for weeks, were not going to be feasible until about 2018 and they wanted them off the table. This was revealing–they had not done their homework and we were angry.

Our team and the PSUFA observers who were present felt strongly that LOS increases were important, and that a long contract like the Admin was proposing wouldn’t benefit us. We needed the ability to at least negotiate economics again in 2 years, especially if PSU’s revenue increased due to changes at the state level. We were still committed to closing the pay gap.

After spending the afternoon exchanging proposals, we decided we had to stand fast with our last proposal or forgo a longer-year contract all together, which both teams wanted. After a long caucus, the admin team came back, reviewed our last proposal and said simply: “we agree.”

The work continues! For now, we will be working to move the economic agreements into contract language, and you will be hearing from us soon about a member meeting and ratification party. Then two years of organizing! When we are back at the table in 2018, we want to have the power to build on all we started here, compose a dynamite bargaining team, strategize, and demand more!

Thank you to all the observers who came out to support our affinity bargaining day and to those who have sent good wishes. We felt supported by the presence of the members and allies who came out on the 6th. We had a long day, our session started at 9am and went until 10pm. Unfortunately, we didn’t reach agreement on wages and benefits, but we feel hopeful that we laid some important groundwork. The administration’s team seemed to understand how important increases to our funds for professional development and healthcare are. We also came to possible agreements on a number of smaller issues.

As the day progressed, our team felt they had to battle to stay in the organic, interest-focused process that affinity bargaining is known for. About halfway through the day the administration’s team took a long caucus to come up with a full proposal that they then presented. This changed the mood of the day considerably. While there were certainly aspects of the proposal that were positive, such as wage rates for independent study courses, access to the Employee Assistance Program, and roll-overs in our benefits funds (so that any unspent money would accrue in the accounts rather than be returned to the University at the end of the fiscal year), it became clear that there was a substantial discrepancy between our parties in terms of wage increases.

While we felt heard in our desire to address pay disparity amongst part-time faculty, we still have some work to do to impress upon the administration how necessary substantial raises are, especially for the majority of faculty who make the minimum per credit rate. It was frustrating to end without a settlement, especially when our team has been at this for so long, but we plan to keep pushing. We’d rather spend another long day and night at the table then settle for way less than what we think part-time faculty deserve.

The administration’s team has stated over and over that they have a limited amount of money to work with: fiscal year 2015’s budget plus 3%. We want to do more than negotiate about how that money is allocated, but to negotiate about how adjunct faculty and instruction overall are prioritized at PSU.

May 20th will be another full day of negotiation. Stay tuned for more details.

Tomorrow is our big bargaining day! We will finally be talking economics with the University administration. Thanks to everyone who filled out our recent survey, it gave our team a sense of members’ priorities and emphasized the importance of significant wage increases. If you can spare a moment of your day to come observe and support, we’re organizing a small member turnout. If you can come, email Anna at vicepresident[at]psufa[dot]org.

After a long hiatus, our team will be back at the table with the PSU administration for Affinity Bargaining, the special one-day IBB negotiation model specifically designed for economics. As our team prepares for that crucial — and hopefully final — day of bargaining on May 6, we need to know what economic issues are most important to you. We will be negotiating around the following:

Wages

Longevity increases

Wage rates for faculty making the minimum per credit rate and for those above the minimum

Wage rates or additional support for over-enrolled classes and online teaching

Benefits

Professional Development Fund

Faculty Education Fund

Health Care Fund

PERS Pick-up

Campus Amenities

Parking and Transportation

Extra-Instructional Compensation

Pay for Late Appointments and Cancelled Classes

Pay for Committee Work

Adjunct Excellence Award

Compensation for Collective Bargaining

Sick Leave

We will be guided by the interests the two teams jointly outlined at the table. Some of which include:

Fairness

Responsiveness to needs and local economic trends

Equity with comparators, amongst part-time faculty and with full-time faculty

Hope for the future

Sustainable career paths

Healthy working/learning conditions

Recognition of seniority and outstanding contributions

Recruiting and retaining diverse faculty

Respect for available resources

Trust and maintenance of a good labor management relationship

Financial sustainability for the University

Having people feel they have a stake in the university’s success etc.

Reading through this list, it is pretty clear the distinct interests of the two teams. We will have to challenge the University to acknowledge the enormous contributions of adjunct faculty and push them to shift their funding priorities.

If you can, please take a few minutes to respond to the survey below, which will be open for 1 week. In addition, join us for bargaining on the 6th, come observe and let the Administration see our strength in numbers. Stay tuned for more information. And…

Overall, in this session we completed some unfinished business, and we discussed issues related to member well-being and rights, which aren’t sufficiently addressed in our current contract. We also set the stage for our major economics discussion.

We finalized a Letter of Agreement setting plans in motion for On-boarding and Orientation for adjuncts. Right now, there is nothing in place to orient new part-time faculty to the University. PSUFA has attempted to address the situation by organizing an Adjunct Day each of the past two years. While successful, we haven’t reached a majority of adjuncts who can benefit from orientation processes. Now, working jointly with Academic Affairs, we’ll begin to develop such a process.

We also included language in the Facilities section that may, in the future, provide better workspace for our members. We discussed extending library access, and agreed that an adjunct can get extended access by requesting it from their chair. We also revised our section on Safe Conditions, outlining clearer procedures and protections to ensure that part-time faculty members have recourse in situations of hazardous building conditions, or harassment, threats, and bullying. We also strengthened language in our sections on Disputes and Intellectual Property.

The most exciting aspect of the negotiation session was a continuation of a discussion about setting up a University award (or awards) specifically for adjunct faculty. It was suggested that adjuncts can vie for some existing university wide awards, but we are at a disadvantage when competing with full time faculty. Both teams agreed that adjuncts need their own award and that it should have some monetary component. We agreed to develop a Letter of Agreement that will set a working group in motion to develop an awards procedure and reception process.

Last but not least: We began our discussion of economics by defining 3 basic areas that will define our economic negotiations: wages (including salary, pay bumps for longevity, online teaching rate, teaching assistants for certain large classes, class size in general), benefits (including the existing 3 programs-health care, faculty ed, professional development-plus parking/transportation, access to ASRC and EAP) and extra-instructionalcompensation (compensation for committee work, for bargaining, sick leave, and the adjunct excellence award that will be created by the committee).

Next session will be a clean up session for outstanding issues other than economics and a report from a subcommittee composed of members of both teams who met to get more information and clarification from the Administration’s economic presentation and budget model which we saw during our the 2/26 session.

After that it is to Affinity Bargaining an accelerated IBB process for negotiating economic issues. Stay tuned for more.

As our PSUFA bargaining team works to get a new contract that includes greater job security, increased wages and benefits, we can help them by making ourselves visible as valuable members of the PSU faculty who happen to hold adjunct positions.

How can we increase our visibility at this busy time of the term? By taking a break at the Second Thursday Social Club, sponsored by the Office of Academic Innovation (OAI).

This is a monthly social occasion to which all faculty are invited, but few adjuncts attend. If we can take some time – for ourselves and to meet others – we can remind our colleagues of the many adjuncts who deserve fair treatment at PSU.

Come to the Second Thursday Social Club on 4 – 6:30 p.m., Thursday, March 10, in the Office of Academic Innovation, 209 Smith Mezzanine, and on your nametag be sure to write ADJUNCT along with your name.